magnificent - esp. the moose. last night I sat out in the h.tub (so west coast I know), looking at the stars and listening to the growls and sighs of satisfaction coming from the ocean 150 metres away... it's love time in the seal colony... they sometimes sound like grizzlies, other times like teenage girls!

I've been thinking about this for days and I can't figure it out. Why does he have a cat? Does the cat help him track? Is it a trained cat? If so, why can't my cats track? All they do is annoy and complain for food.

That pic was taken just as we were leaving the house to head to the coulees. The cat was waiting at the door. She just happens to match his camo. Like your cats, she's always after food, even though she is a master mouser. She's a very cuddly cat, too, and loves to be held. The down side is that she loves to knead as well. I've never seen or felt such long sharp claws.

MY BOOKS

"Whether describing thunder or the flight patterns of ptarmigan, Schmidt does so poetically with a great sense of timing and rhythm. She has the sort of narrative voice that makes sitting in the grass keeping an ear out for birds philosophical and lively – something worth listening to." - Devin Pacholik, Global News Regina.Read more.

"Evoking the work of Don McKay, Trevor Herriot and Gerald Hill, Schmidt walks in some pretty big footsteps, and more than measures up. These essays colonize the middle ground between deep connection with place and concern for its ecological future, constantly questioning our troubled relationship with prairie process." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Nonfiction nomination. Jurors: Barry Ferguson, Wayne Grady, Barry Grills.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews.Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"Throughout More Than Three Feet of Ice, Schmidt reconfigures the commonplace elements of the North, what she knows, and what she doesn't know to achieve startling nuances. In her hands the seemingly insignificant is imbued with meaning and becomes an extraordinary book." - Lynda Grace Philippsen, Books in Canada.